Crim 302 Midterm Review

Deviance

A recognized violation of cultural norms; in this course, deviance is socially dependent and context-sensitive.

Norms

Established standards and expectations about behavior, beliefs, and identities maintained by a group or society.

Positive deviance

Overconformity to norms.

Negative deviance

Underconformity to norms.

Positive deviance example

No speeding/traffic tickets, exceptional talent, or unusually enthusiastic classroom participation.

Negative deviance example

Many traffic tickets, shoplifting, assault/physical fighting, or sleeping in class.

Relativistic conception of deviance

Treats deviance as socially constructed and dependent on context.

Normative conception of deviance

Treats deviance as more objectively given through established rules or laws.

Social constructionist perspective

Perspective associated with social deviance and the relativistic conception.

Positivist perspective

Perspective associated with criminal deviance and the normative conception.

Boundary maintenance

Drawing or reinforcing social lines between insiders and outsiders.

Border work

Social boundary-making that separates insiders from outsiders.

People sorting

Placing people into social categories such as insiders and outsiders.

Us vs. them

A core idea in boundary maintenance, stigma, and labeling.

Moral panic

An intensified social reaction that reinforces perceived threats and social boundaries.

Stanley Cohen

Associated with moral panic and folk devils.

Folk devils

People or groups treated as scapegoats or symbols of threat during a moral panic.

Kai T. Eriksen

Associated with the idea that deviance is behavior that exceeds a group's tolerable limits.

Tolerable limits

The range of behavior a group is willing to accept before behavior is treated as deviant.

Folkways

The lowest-level everyday norms and the norms least likely to be tied to formal sanctions.

Mores

Stronger norms tied to important moral expectations; violating a more is treated as more serious deviance.

Bader, Becker, and Desmond

Argue that the study of deviance should be grounded in sociology.

Erving Goffman

Associated with norms, social expectations, stigma, virtual vs. actual identity, and the management of spoiled identity.

Goffman on norms

Norms are routines of social intercourse in established settings that let people deal with anticipated others without special attention or thought.

Goffman and social expectations

Goffman's definitions of norms and deviance revolve around social expectations and social intercourse.

Social identity

In Goffman's framework, social identity involves first impressions, assumptions, stereotypes, and virtual versus actual identity.

Virtual identity

What others assume or expect a person to be.

Actual identity

What a person actually is, as distinguished from others' assumptions.

Stigma

Social information that is deeply discrediting.

Prestige

Social information described as deeply crediting.

Goffman: stigma is relational

Stigma is based on a language of relationships, not attributes alone.

Attribute-stereotype relationship

Goffman's idea that stigma involves a special relationship between an attribute and a stereotype.

Abominations of the body

One of Goffman's three types of stigma.

Blemishes of individual character

One of Goffman's three types of stigma.

Tribal stigma

One of Goffman's three types of stigma, tied to socially defined group membership.

Stigmatization

The social process through which a person or difference becomes negatively categorized and treated differently.

Differential treatment

A cornerstone of stigmatization.

Discredited

When an individual assumes their differentness is already known.

Discreditable

When an individual's differentness is not known or perceivable.

Passing

A stigma-management strategy described as double living.

Status symbols

Symbols that communicate socially valued identity or position.

Stigma symbols

Symbols that communicate stigmatized identity.

Disidentifiers

Signals used to weaken or counter assumptions tied to a stigmatized identity.

Perceptibility

How noticeable or perceivable a potentially stigmatizing difference is.

The own

People who share the same stigma.

The wise

Allies connected to stigmatized people who understand their experiences.

Courtesy stigma

Stigma experienced because of association with a stigmatized person.

Moral career

The process through which a stigmatized person learns to understand and socially manage stigma.

Worthen

Associated with Norm-Centered Stigma Theory (NCST).

NCST

Norm-Centered Stigma Theory.

NCST foundation

NCST is built from norms, social power, and stigma.

NCST Tenet 1

There is a culturally dependent and reciprocal relationship between norms and stigma.

Norm centrality

Norms are central to understanding stigma: without norms and norm violations, there is no stigma.

NCST Tenet 2

The relationship between norms and stigma is organized by social power dynamics between the stigmatized and the stigmatizers.

NCST Tenet 3

Stigma includes negativity and social sanctions directed toward norm violations and norm violators, justified through social power dynamics, and situated on a spectrum.

Social power in NCST

Privilege based on access to and embodiment of social, cultural, economic, and political advantages afforded to some beliefs, behaviors, and identities over others.

Stafford and Scott

Associated with the idea that stigma is a characteristic contrary to the norm of a social unit.

Link and Phelan

Associated with stigma as a process involving labeling, stereotyping, separation, status loss, discrimination, and social power.

Stigmatized lens

Examines how the target of stigma's own social position and power affect their experiences with stigma.

Stigmatizer lens

Examines how the stigmatizer's own social position and power affect their attitudes toward norm violations and stigma.

Howard Becker

Associated with labeling theory, outsiders, moral entrepreneurs, and primary/secondary deviance.

Labeling

A contested process involving changes in group membership between insiders and outsiders.

Primary deviance

Deviance before a stable outsider label; may be explained away as 'oops' behavior.

Secondary deviance

Deviance that occurs after labeling and outsider status become socially meaningful.

Labeling Big Idea 1

Labeling is a contested process.

Labeling Big Idea 2

Labeling is about changes in group membership, especially insiders becoming outsiders.

Labeling Big Idea 3

The labeling process is bi-directional.

Bidirectionality

Labeling can move from insider to outsider and from outsider back to insider.

Turning point

A major event or change that may alter a person's life-course trajectory and help make labeling reversible.

Unlabeling

The removal or reversal of a deviant label.

Desistance

The point when an individual stops engaging in criminal or deviant behavior during the life course.

Desistance and labels

Stopping deviant behavior may or may not lead to removal of a deviant label.

Redemption

A process through which an outsider may regain acceptance and move toward insider status.

Moral entrepreneur

Howard Becker's term for people who make and enforce social rules.

Rule enforcement

An enterprising act in Becker's account.

Whistle blowing

Publicizing an infraction by a rule enforcer.

Formal rule enforcement

Rule enforcement carried out through official roles or institutions.

Informal rule enforcement

Rule enforcement carried out outside formal institutions.

Deterrence

In classical criminological theory, deterrence is based on certainty, severity, and celerity of punishment.

Certainty

How likely punishment is to occur.

Severity

How harsh punishment is.

Celerity

How quickly punishment follows the behavior.

John Braithwaite

Associated with reintegrative shaming, disintegrative stigmatization, and the social embeddedness of sanctions.

Community disapproval

Can induce shame and may range from mild rebuke to degradation ceremonies.

Mild rebuke

Often implied and transient, followed by a return to normalcy.

Direct private reproach

Private disapproval; the privacy can lend itself to reintegration.

Small group censure

Keeping reprimand among group insiders can preserve the offender's sense of belonging.

Institutional reprimand

Conveys severity while implying an interest in maintaining official ties.

Ritualized public shaming

Can function as a cleansing process with a journey toward redemption and reintegration.

Degradation ceremony

A public process that can strip or degrade someone's accepted social status.

Reintegrative shaming

Community disapproval followed by gestures of reacceptance into the community.

Disintegrative shaming / stigmatization

Shaming that creates outcasts and applies the deviant label to the person rather than only to the behavior.

Reacceptance

The return to group acceptance after apology, behavior change, accountability, or other reintegrative responses.

Social embeddedness

Sanctions and shame are more powerful when delivered by people whose relationships still matter to the offender.

Braithwaite on deterrence

The social embeddedness of a sanction can matter more than the severity of the sanction.

Family model

Braithwaite's example of punishment within continued love and belonging; punishment does not permanently turn the person into an outsider.

Calling out

Course material links this more closely with disintegrative stigmatizing.

Calling in/on

Course material links this more closely with reintegrative shaming and continued belonging.

Restorative justice

An approach built around repairing harm, accountability, relationships/community, and voluntary participation.

Restorative justice tenet 1

Identifying needs and repairing harm.